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Blog expands upon our monthly main site commentary. Regular categories include Fund Updates, Works In Progress, Making Most of MFO Premium, and Site Updates. Reader comments can be posted via the form provided under each post. Subscribers can also submit articles as guests and offer site feedback by clicking here.

Grandeur Peak, recommended strongly by David (and Sam), continues to be an MFO Top Fund Family. All seven of its funds have beaten their peers handsomely since launch. Its two open funds, Global Stalwarts (GGSOX) and International Stalwarts (GISYX), have done particularly well this past year. That said, all seven are experiencing five months of drawdown.

Looks like GVAL has crushed competition in Global Large Cap Value category this past year thru March. Top quintile performance in absolute and risk adjusted returns, including Sharpe, Sortino, and Martin. Its 3-year numbers look good too!

222 US mutual funds and ETFs were launched in first quarter: 90 ETFs, 87 index, 53 fund of funds, 7 socially conscious. Vanguard’s six new “actively managed” quant ETFs all performed well out of the gate.

Vanguard by far has largest number of funds leading their respective categories in assets under management, as seen in table below. At 44, that’s almost 30% of the 155 categories Lipper tracks.

Pulling on this one a bit more … Vanguard has 178 funds in 81 categories, so with 44 of its funds leading their categories in AUM, Vanguard leads more that half of the categories it “competes” in! Wow.

A bit old news, but here are 2017 risk/return metrics for the top 10 US funds by assets under management (AUM), sorted by AUM. Eight index funds. Two ETFs SPY and IVV. Six Vanguard funds. The two actively managed funds, both American Funds, generate the about same fee annually $2.5B as the six Vanguard funds combined (click on image to enlarge).

Half of today’s nearly 10,000 US mutual funds & ETFs did not exist 10 years ago. Half of those did not exist 20 years ago. Making for a sort of net effective half-life (or doubling-time) of 10 years. Only 10% existed 30 years ago or say a about generation ago. Only 66 date back to January 1960.

We thought we’d start continue up with the 130 U.S. equity funds which have passed their second anniversary but have not yet reached their third, which is when conventional trackers such as Morningstar and Lipper pick them up. As Charles has repeatedly demonstrated, the screener at MFO Premium allows you to answer odd and interesting questions. When markets are rising, everybody’s question is the same: who’s making the most?